The accuracy and efficiency of a reduced-order model for transient flow analysis in gas pipelines

A reduced-order modeling approach for natural gas transient flow in pipelines is proposed. The Euler equations are considered as the governing equations and solved numerically using the implicit Steger-Warming flux vector splitting method (FSM). Next, the linearized form of the equations is derived and the corresponding eigensystem is obtained. Then, a few dominant flow eigenmodes are used to construct an efficient reduced-order model. Two well-known test cases are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the proposed method. The results obtained using the proposed reduced-order model, are in good agreement with those of the direct numerical method. Moreover, it is shown that the proposed reduced-order model is more efficient than the conventional numerical techniques for transient flow analysis of natural gas in pipelines. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.